SIL International Media Release
Phonology Assistant 3.0.1 software release
(May 2008) SIL International announces the release of version 3.0.1 of Phonology Assistant (PA), a computer program to assist in phonetics and phonology analysis. It creates consonant and vowel inventory charts from a data corpus and allows a user to search that corpus for phonetic patterns within specified environments.
PA 3.0.1 is a complete rewrite of PA 2.0. Although many of the features in version 2.0 are included in version 3.0.1, there are many new features and improvements found in PA 3.0.1.
What's New
- Unicode-compliant
- Direct reading of data from FieldWorks Language Explorer, Toolbox databases and transcribed Speech Analyzer audio files
- Dynamic data corpus updating as underlying data sources change
- Support for uncertain transcriptions
- Support for experimental transcriptions
- Support for ambiguous sequences
- Support for ignoring—in searches—diacritics, tone, stress and length markings
- Customizable XY charts
- Custom fields
- HTML and XML export
What's Improved
- User interface
- Search capabilities
- Performance—both reading and searching data
SIL has developed more than 60 pieces of software to support the work of its fieldworkers, most available to the public for free download.
Related links of interest
- Phonology Assistant 3.0.1 (PA)
- SIL software catalog
- FieldWorks Language Explorer
- Toolbox (The Field Linguist's Toolbox)
- Shoebox (The Linguist's Shoebox)
- Speech Analyzer: Use this program for recording, transcribing and analyzing sound files.
- IPA Help: Use this program to learn to hear, transcribe and produce the sounds of the International Phonetic Alphabet.